Internalism without Luminosity 1

In this paper, I defend an account of the reasons for which we act, believe, and so on for any Ф such that there can be reasons for which we Ф. Such reasons are standardly called motivating reasons. I argue that three dominant views of motivating reasons (psychologism, factualism and disjunctivism) all fail to capture the ordinary concept of a motivating reason. I show this by drawing out three constraints on what motivating reasons must be, and demonstrating how each view fails to satisfy at least one of these constraints. I then propose and defend my own account of motivating reasons, which I call the Guise of Normative Reasons Account. On the account I defend, motivating reasons are propositions. A proposition is the reason for which someone Ф‐s when (a) she represents that proposition as a normative reason to Ф, and (b) her representation explains, in the right way, her Ф‐ing. As I argue, the Guise of Normative Reasons Account satisfies all three constraints on what motivating reasons must be, and weathers several objections that might be leveled against propositionalist views.

Section: What Motivating Reasons Must Besupporting

confidence: 77%

Acting and Believing Under the Guise of Normative Reasons

Singh

2018

“…See Schafer () (who is largely responsible for introducing the connection between epistemic rationality and doxastic planning into recent literature) for discussion of this issue. For further discussion of doxastic planning and its implications see Greco and Hedden (forthcoming), Schoenfield () and Schoenfield (forthcoming b ). (See also Greco () and Steele (forthcoming) who don't explicitly use the language of doxastic planning, but are naturally interpreted as appealing to similar considerations.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

An Accuracy Based Approach to Higher Order Evidence

Schoenfield

2016

Self Cite

The aim of this paper is to apply the accuracy based approach to epistemology to the case of higher order evidence: evidence that bears on the rationality of one's beliefs. I proceed in two stages. First, I show that the accuracy based framework that is standardly used to motivate rational requirements supports steadfastness—a position according to which higher order evidence should have no impact on one's doxastic attitudes towards first order propositions. The argument for this will require a generalization of an important result by Greaves and Wallace for the claim that conditionalization maximizes expected accuracy. The generalization I provide will, among other things, allow us to apply the result to cases of self‐locating evidence. In the second stage, I develop an alternative framework. Very roughly, what distinguishes the traditional approach from the alternative one is that, on the traditional picture, we're interested in evaluating the expected accuracy of conforming to an update procedure. On the alternative picture that I develop, instead of considering how good an update procedure is as a plan to conform to, we consider how good it is as a plan to make. I show how, given the use of strictly proper scoring rules, the alternative picture vindicates calibrationism: a view according to which higher order evidence should have a significant impact on our beliefs. I conclude with some thoughts about why higher order evidence poses a serious challenge for standard ways of thinking about rationality.

“…Here the relevant mental states are meant to be specified somehow other than through introspective access. For example, Wedgwood (, forthcoming) or Schoenfield () focus on those of your mental states that are non‐factive, i.e. such that you can bear them to the proposition that p even if it is not the case that p. For the sake of simplicity, I will simply stick with the place‐holder “internal mental state.”…”

Section: Understanding Internalism Vs Externalism About Introspectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… See Wedgwood (, forthcoming) or Schoenfield (). The possibility of internalism without Accessibilism is perhaps suggested as early as Sosa (: 146‐148). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evil Demon Inside

Silins

2018

This paper examines how new evil demon problems could arise for our access to the internal world of our own minds. I start by arguing that the internalist/externalist debate in epistemology has been widely misconstrued—we need to reconfigure the debate in order to see how it can arise about our access to the internal world. I then argue for the coherence of scenarios of radical deception about our own minds, and I use them to defend a properly formulated internalist view about our access to our minds. The overarching lesson is that general epistemology and the specialized epistemology of introspection need to talk—each has much to learn from each other.